Techradar.com managed to get their hands on the official release date and price for the UK launch of the Asus Fonepad, a 7-inch, Intel Atom based tablet that has full phone and 3G HSPA+ support.

According to Techradar.com, the new Asus Fonepad might be the real Nexus 7 killer considering that it packs some impressive specs, full 3G capabilities with phone support and most importantly, an impressive £179.99 price tag. For comparison sake, the Google Nexus 7 16GB WiFi-only actually has exactly the same price tag.

In case you missed it, the Asus Fonepad is based on Intel's Lexington single-core (dual-thread) Atom Z2420 clocked at 1.2GHz and paired up with PowerVR SGX 540 GPU clocked at 400MHz. It has a 7-inch 1280x800 touchscreen, 1GB of RAM, 1.2-megapixel front camera, 16GB of storage, mircoSD and microSIM slots that brings full phone and 3G HSPA+ support. It features 4270mAh battery that should, according to Asus, keep it alive for up to 10 hours of video playback and around 32 hours of 3G calls. It will initially run on Android Jelly Bean 4.1.2 OS but Asus promised that the Android 4.2 update will come as soon as possible.

According to Techradar.com, Asus Fonepad should appear for pre-order in the UK at Carphone Warehouse, Amazon and Sainsbury's as of April 12, while shipping should start on April 26.

Of course, we are yet to see some reviews so we'll hold our final judgement until we see it in action.

In addition to the new Asus Padfone Infinity, Asus unveiled its new affordable 7-inch Android tablet as well, the Fonepad. The interesting part of the story is that Asus went for an Intel platform rather than ARM on this rather unusal device.

Built around a 7-inch 1280x800 IPS panel, the Fonepad is based on Intel's Lexington platform with single-core Atom Z2420 CPU clocked at 1.2GHz, 1GB of RAM and PowerVR SGX540 GPU. It also comes with full phone and 3G HSPA+ support and will run on Android 4.1 Jelly Bean OS, and it also features 5GB of free Asus Webstorage to boot.

The Fonepad will actually be available in two different versions. The European one will feature 16GB of storage (expandable by microSD card slot) and a 1.2-megapixel front camera while the APAC region one will cut down the internal storage to 8GB but also feature a 3-megapixel camera on the back. The European Fonepad will launch in April for €220 while the APAC one is coming in March for US $249.

According to a rather substantial amount of rumors coming from various sources it appears that Asus is gearing up to launch yet another 7-inch tablet at Mobile World Congress, the Asus Fonepad.

Digitimes reports that, according to their sources in the upstream supply chain, Asus plans to unveil a 7-inch Fonepad tablet that will be based on Intel's Lexington Atom Z2420 CPU. The device was also confirmed by CNET's independent source familiar with the matter. The new Fonepad should be built around a 7-inch 1280x800 IPS screen and according to early pictures, should have an aluminum body. The rest of the specs include PowerVR SGX540 graphics, 1GB of RAM, front facing 1.2-megapixel camera and up to 32GB of storage.

Same reports suggest that it should be direct competition to the Nexus 7 and thus have a similar price, but should end up cheaper than the MeMO Pad launched earlier in Asia.

In any case, we will know for sure once Mobile World Congress kicks off on February 25th in Barcelona.